Begin in Gladness

It is always a great joy to discover a poet who is able to say what he means not only clearly but musically, singing into one's ear the intelligence of the world. That is Michael Palma in his new collection of lyrics, Begin in Gladness. These poems ride into the heart of language, and they come out trailing melody." — Lewis Turco

About the Author:

Michael Palma's new poetry collection is Begin in Gladness (Star Cloud Press, 2011), and he has also published two previous chapbooks, The Egg Shape (1972) and Antibodies (1997) and one other full-length collection, A Fortune in Gold (2000), as well as an online chapbook, The Ghost of Congress Street: Selected Poems (2008). His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous journals, including Northeast, Pivot, Chelsea, Café Review, Rattapallax, Raintown Review, Big City Lit, Italian Americana, Boston Book Review, and The Oxford Companion to Twentieth Century Poetry in English, and other periodicals, and in anthologies, including Unsettling America and Wild Dreams.

He is also an award-winning translator of Italian poetry, including a fully rhymed translation of Dante's Inferno, published by Norton in 2002 and reissued as a Norton Critical Edition in 2007. Other translations include titles from such prominent Italian poets as Guido Gozzano (The Man I Pretend to Be, 1981); Diego Valeri (My Name on the Wind, 1989); Sergio Corazzini (Sunday Evening, 1997); Luigi Fontanella (The Transparent Life and Other Poems, 2000); Franco Buffoni (The Shadow of Mount Rosa, 2002); Alfredo de Palchi (Dates and Fevers of Anguish, 2006; with Luigi Bonaffini); and Maurizio Cucchi (Jeanne d'Arc and Her Double, 2011). A former Elector of the Poets' Corner at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York, he is an associate editor of Gradiva and of The Journal of Italian Translation, and poetry editor of Italian Americana.

He was born in the Bronx in 1945. After many years of teaching, he now works as a freelance proofreader and editor. He has one son, Brian, and lives with his wife, Victoria, an occupational therapist, in Bellows Falls, Vermont.